100 Years Later, Martha Graham Remains the Gold Standard of Contemporary Dance

Martha Graham Dance Company’ — Presented by Celebrity Series of Boston at Emerson Cutler Majestic. Run has ended.

By Shelley A. Sackett

The last time I saw a Martha Graham piece performed was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in October 2023, when I had the random good fortune to attend its exhibition, Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930s. As part of that exhibit, dancers from the Martha Graham Dance Company staged some of Graham’s most powerful ’30s solos in galleries throughout the museum.

I was lucky enough to catch “Lamentations” in the New Greek and Roman Galleries, the spectacular “museum-within-the-museum” built to display the Met’s extraordinary collection of Hellenistic, Etruscan, South Italian, and Roman sculpture.

Graham’s 1930 work, set to Hungarian Zoltàn Kodàly’s plaintive music, features a single dancer whose angular moves inside a stretchy fabric cocoon have long marked Graham’s trailblazing style. Over a mere four minutes, the dancer fights what feels like an eternal battle to get out of her encasement. Only her face, hands and feet are visible, yet the geometric shapes she creates epitomize her fruitless struggle. She pleads and prays, but there is no escape. Graham called the piece “the personification of grief.”

Seeing the timeless, sculptural piece in a sun-filled atrium with an audience of ancient statues was nothing short of sublime.

Its recent performance at the 1,200-seat beaux-art Emerson Cutler Majestic, though a less intimate setting, was no less astonishing.

Few dance companies have transfigured the art of contemporary dance quite like Martha Graham’s. Since the company’s founding in 1926, Graham’s signature style has remained a bedrock of American modern dance and continues to be taught worldwide.

In anticipation of the company’s 100^th birthday celebration in 2026 (GRAHAM100), the Boston Celebrity Series brought the legendary troupe to Boston for three special appearances to kick off its own 2024/2025 Season Dance Series.

The Friday night capacity show illustrated why Graham remains the gold standard of contemporary dance choreography.

The program opened with “Dark Meadow Suite (1946), highlights from her longer “Dark Meadow.” The full ensemble (featuring Lloyd Knight and Anne Souder) performs an ancient mating ritual as part of Graham’s American homage to a mythological rite of spring.

The piece opens with a Greek chorus of five women who circle trancelike, stamping a primordial rhythm with their bare feet. Thick, rich music by Carlos Chávez sets the auditory stage for stunning, sensual, animal-like movements as dancers join, separate, and pulsate in perfect synchronicity. Playful lighting (Nick Hung) adds color and texture and black and orange flowing costumes (Martha Graham) are equal parts elegance and flirty frolic. Knight and Souder are the embodiment of grace as they perform their coupling ceremony, which Graham described as “a re-enactment of the mysteries which attend the eternal adventure of seeking.”

Close Graham friend and collaborator Agnes de Mille, the storyteller niece of filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, choreographed the iconic “Rodeo or The Courting at Burnt Ranch.” For its GRAHAM100 3-year celebration, Gabriel Witcher rearranged Aaron Copeland’s trademark music for a six-piece bluegrass ensemble. Celebrating the diverse genesis of America, the piece is a series of humorous vignettes featuring dancers clad in full-blown cowpoke, cowgirl, and genteel pioneer women’s regalia.

Like a silent movie, the action takes place on a Saturday afternoon and evening on a ranch in the southwest. DeMille referred to her work as “a pastorale, a lyric joke,” and as The Cowgirl, Laurel Dalley Smith manages to be sassy and funny while displaying serious dancing talent. The piece flits from a Wyatt Earp TV set to a mariachi band to a barn dance, loving spoofs that straddle Broadway blockbuster musicals, classical ballet, and cowboy rodeo activities. In between are tastes of square dances, polkas, and couples pairing and unpairing. Screen projections that change from ranch to sunset to starry night to barn dance are effective without being hokey.

Post intermission, the afore-described “Lamentations” is even more stunning on the heels of the slapstick-like “Rodeo.” So Young An, the recipient of the International Arts Award and the Grand Prize at the Korea National Ballet Grand Prix, is a talent to be reckoned with.

The evening ends with the 2024 piece, “The People.” Choreographed by Jamar Roberts, who describes his work as “part protest, part lament,” the piece resonates with references to American history. Dancers are both uplifting paeans to the hope and promise of American folk music and downtrodden, burdened examples of what can happen when America doesn’t live up to its promises. A new score by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and American roots musician Rhiannon Giddens (arranged by Witcher) spotlights rich, throaty harmonies peppered with pockets of poignant silence.

The last time the Martha Graham Dance Company adorned Boston’s stage was in 2005. Judging from the exuberant standing ovation its 2024 audience bestowed last Friday evening, one can only hope they got the message that they have been away far too long.

ASP’s ‘Emma’ Is Deliciously Incisive, Ingenious and Impudent

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

Lorraine Victoria Kanyike, Fady Demian, Josephine Elwood, and Liza Giangrande in Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s production of ‘Emma’. Photo by Nile Scott Studios.

‘Emma’ — Written by Kate Hamill. Based on the novel by Jane Austen. Directed by Regine Vital. Scenic Design by Saskia Martinez; Costume Design by Nia Safarr Banks; Lighting Design by Deb Sullivan; Sound Design by Anna Drummond. Presented by Actors’ Shakespeare Project at Multicultural Arts Center, 41 Second St., East Cambridge through December 15^th.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Jane Austen’s 1815 novel “Emma,” like all her other novels, explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian–Regency England. Her Emma Woodhouse is a bright, wealthy, and confident young woman who basically has it all — education, intelligence, beauty, and money. She also has a surplus of self-confidence, pride and time. She is as spoiled, meddlesome, and self-deluded as she is witty, charming, and pithy.

She lives in an age that prepares wealthy women like Emma for a life of the mind but permits them no occupational outlet. It is matrimony or nothing. It’s no wonder the poor girl nearly explodes with pent-up energy and resentment.

Bored with her own life, Emma turns to the challenge of meddling in the lives of others, manipulating them for sport. She doesn’t court friends; she undertakes assignments. Although she is as unskilled at reading others as she is at self-examination, she fashions herself a gifted matchmaker. Her delusional overconfidence as a marriage broker blinds her to her own romantic potential and leads to misunderstandings, mayhem and heartache.

To her credit, Kate Hammill has taken Austen’s borderline unsympathetic heroine and turned her into a likable rebel who rails against the cruel patriarchal system that imprisons her potential. “What is the purpose of educating women only to have them marry?” she asks. “I must have something to do, or I shall go mad.”

Hamill is no stranger to the genre (she adapted three other Austen works as well as “Little Women” and “Vanity Fair”), and her “Emma“ brims with a delicious melding of past and present, creating a heroine as at home at a lady’s afternoon tea as cutting up the disco dance floor in a white go-go jumper.

Over nearly 2 1/2 hours (one intermission), the plot unfolds. Emma (played with boundless joy and energy by Josephine Moshiri Elwood) and the cast are introduced to us at a party celebrating the wedding of her former governess, Anne (Mara Sidmore), and the widower Mr. Weston (Dev Luthra). Emma tells her father and her best friend since childhood, George Knightley (an outstanding Alex Bowden), that she practically arranged the marriage by introducing them. After such a clear “success,” Emma is determined to make another match. This time, she has set her sights on Mr. Elton, the village vicar. Both Emma’s father and Knightly caution her against interfering, but they ultimately fail to dissuade her.

“You can’t control everything, Emma,” Knightly warns her repeatedly, only to meet the same response: “But isn’t it fun to watch me try?”

In an act as dispassionate and calculating as Henry Higgins’ taking on Eliza Doolittle, Emma decides that for her next “project,” she will undertake the transformation of Harriet, a 17-year-old student of unknown parentage and inferior social status. Harriet is an eager beaver, as compliant and adoring as a lapdog.

Emma sets about improving (i.e., making her more like herself) her “friend,” starting with convincing her that the groundskeeper, Robert Martin (Fady Demian), the man she loves, is beneath her. When he proposes, Emma gets Harriet to refuse him. She is determined to get Mr. Elton to fall in love with Harriet, thereby elevating both Harriet’s social standing and her own reputation as an unmatched matchmaker.

Needless to say, all does not go according to Emma’s plan. The rest of the play is peppered with colorful characters and rotating liaisons that, owing to double and triple casting, are often hard to keep straight. Aloof, mysterious Jane Fairfax (Lorraine Victoria Kanyike) is Emma’s equal and rival, the only one able to ruffle Emma’s feathers. She is as cool as Emma is hot-blooded, as calm as Emma is kinetic.

Adding insult to Emma’s injured pride, she is also accomplished (as a governess) and intriguing (she left her most recent job under mysterious conditions). She is a thorn in Emma’s side, catapulting her best-laid plans into the abyss.

Although marriage doesn’t figure into Emma’s plans for herself, Knightly and Emma are a match made in heaven that is tediously obvious. They squabble and dance around each other until Emma’s former governess, a very pregnant Anne, practically knocks their heads together and tells them to “work it out!”

Emma must first be pushed off her narcissistic pedestal before this can happen. Ironically, it is meek, malleable Harriet who does the honors when she rejects Emma’s “help” and realizes she has been duped. “You think you control everything, but you don’t control me anymore,” she practically spits.

Like a deer caught in headlights, Emma has a major breakthrough of sudden self-examination. Breaking the fourth wall (which Hamill and Vital execute frequently and effectively), she addresses the audience with cartoonish naïveté. “I may not know everything,” she deadpans in the same stunned voice with which Dorothy announces, “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Subtlety is hardly this production’s strong suit.

What IS its strong suit is a stellar cast with unrivaled energy. Elwood IS Emma, with all her strengths and weaknesses. It is a pleasure witnessing an actor so comfortable in her own skin and in that of her character’s, and a joy to behold her joy in the role.

As Harriet, Liza Giangrande has to walk a fine line between hysterically funny and pathetically histrionic. Giangrande rises above the sometimes two-dimensionality of her character, embracing Harriet’s more accessible, loveable, trusting side.

Bowden’s Knightly centers the plot and grounds Emma. He also projects and articulates so effectively that even when his back is to the audience (a frequent and unfortunate feature of the staging, as is poor sight lines from most seats), his lines are easily understandable. Likewise for Mara Sidmore’s Anne Weston.

Although the play is fun, full of funny one-liners and Monty Python-esque routines, at the end of the day, it is Emma and the complicated times she lives through that resonate. As we wade through the sight gags, slapstick, and farce, her plaintive refrain rises above to ring clear as a bell: “What is the purpose of educating women if a lady is not allowed real employment?”

Yet Hamill ends on a hopeful note, planting the seeds of 20th-century feminism in 19th-century soil.

“If I teach my girls the best I can and they teach their girls the best THEY can and their girls and their girls, and so on – who knows what we could make? What power we could harness? What we could do? Can you imagine—someday—a whole world full of Emmas, working together?” Emma asks the half-stunned, half thrilled Knightly.

“Now THAT, dear Emma,” Knightly should have said in response, ”is a cause indeed worthy of a rebel like you.”

For more information, visit https://www.actorsshakespeareproject.org/

SpeakEasy’s “Pru Payne” Is A Must See for Fans of Fabulous Theater

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

Karen MacDonald and Gordon Clapp in SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of *Pru Payne*.
Photo: Nile Scott Studios

By Shelley A. Sackett

Karen MacDonald, recently introduced as “the empress of Boston,” adds another gem to her tiara with her portrayal of Prudence Payne, a Dorothy Parker-esque reviewer whose sharp wit, acid tongue and encyclopedic familiarity with minutiae of all things cultural have earned her many awards. We are introduced to her as she and her son, Thomas (De’Lon Grant) sit in the Brook Hollow clinic anteroom, awaiting a consultation with a doctor. The television is blaring pablum. Pru regally grabs the remote, waves it like a magic wand. She tries to turn the television set off, but can’t. She retakes her seat, slumping in confused defeat. Tommy reminds her that there are other people in the room who may want to continue watching. “Re. Member,” Pru says, enunciating each letter as if it were a syllable unto itself.

In a flash of a flashback, the music cues and we are transported to 1988 (kudos to Set Designers Christopher and Justin Swader, whose elegantly simple set easily morphs in our mind’s eye from medical waiting room to time travel “Beam Me Up Scotty” mode to grand ceremonial dais.) Pru is at the pinnacle of her career, about to become the first woman and first critic to receive the alliteratively laden AAAA’s (American Academy of Arts and Aesthetics) Abernathy Award.

We catch her as she mounts the podium amidst resounding applause. Her acceptance speech is impudent, provocative and riotously funny. She is brilliant and revels in peppering her monologue with fast-paced literary citations that showcase her sophisticated and seasoned palette while challenging her audience to guess their source. If there were a Mensa Jeopardy, Pru would be its host.

But a sudden shift, almost imperceptible at first, indicates all is not quite right with Pru. She devolves into F-bombs, rectal references and borderline slander. Thomas approaches her, but she waves him away. When she loses her place and starts to panic on stage, MacDonald’s prodigious skills are on full display. In the blink of an eye, her Pru actually pales, her face sags, her shoulders droop and her speech falters. Thomas rescues her and escorts her to her seat. We are back in the waiting room, where the TV continues to blame.

Brook Hollow, it turns out, is a Massachusetts memory clinic where Thomas has brought Pru for evaluation following her speech and the uproar it causes. To smooth the turbulent wake Pru left with the AAAA, he has offered up her memoir as a peace offering, due the following fall. It is only two weeks later, yet we sense that Pru has deteriorated. She is still irreverent and acerbic, yet her confusion and slips are more frequent.

Thomas is desperate to thwart his mother’s memory loss. It is an irony lost to no one that a woman whose memory is galloping away is chasing her past before it is out of reach in order to write her memoir.

For the next 90 intermission-less minutes, we ride shotgun over two decades as Pru travels down the path of full-blown, irreversible dementia. If this sounds gut-wrenching and jarring, it is. Yet, in the skilled hands of master wordsmith and award-winning playwright Steven Drukman (and under Paul Daigneault’s flawless and sensitive direction), it is also rip-roaringly funny and brimming with empathy. The Newton native has married head and heart in a tightly crafted script that abounds in clever one-liners and zinger plays on words. (It also has tons of fun local references). Painful as the topic and Pru’s story are, Drukman’s humor and hopefulness dull the knife’s sharp blade just enough to prevent the play from circling the drain of utter despair.

He has also penned a group of supporting characters who each have independent agendas and stories, yet who interlace as an ensemble that embraces and supports the play’s eponymous Pru.

Pru and Thomas, an aspiring novelist, meet with Dr. Dolan (the magnificent Marianna Bassham in an unfortunately understated, somewhat unimaginative role), who, unsurprisingly, wants to admit Pru for observation. They start to protest when Pru spots Gus Cadahy (the quietly show-stopping Emmy, SAG and IRNE Awards winner Gordon Clapp), a custodial engineer who is accompanied by his son, Art (Greg Maraio). They, too, are at Brook Hollow so Gus can be evaluated for memory decline and associated behaviors.

Pru and Gus are yin and yang, opposite forces that form a whole in a balance that is always changing. He is lower middle class, uneducated, and speaks with a thick Boston accent. She is stratospherically wealthy, wears her pedigree on her sleeve, and effects a Brahmin patois. He is unapologetic, hilarious and down to earth, determined to squeeze every last drop of fun and pleasure out of life. He makes no excuses and accepts what comes his way.

She is calculated, driven and controlling. “Good enough” are two words meant to be spat, like a curse. Despite her sophistication and breeding, she is far crasser than the social mores minded Gus.

Their love affair at Brook Hollow opens the door to more than a delineation of their differences. Pru is Gus’ missing piece and vice versa. He softens and grounds her, whether playing gin, dancing, making love or reeling her back from memory’s steep precipice. Pru, for the first time in her life, is able to let go, let loose and let herself love and be loved.

Meanwhile, their sons have their own backstory, which would be a spoiler to divulge other than to let slip that, while their parents are creating new memories, their sons are revisiting old ones.

Boston native Maraio is terrific as Art, both in his interactions with his father and with Thomas, especially as concerns their parents’ relationship. He brings a nuanced vulnerability to his external impermeability. Grant, so wonderful as Keith in “A Case for the Existence of God,” brings that same sweet openness to Thomas, a quiet defenselessness and optimism.

Although Drukman meanders peripherally into timely topics of the 1990s and 2000s (AIDS, politics, and the demise of cultural standards, for example), he has the good sense to use this detour for context rather than theme. He has written an important and riveting play about a timely and difficult subject that is, in its own right, much more than just “good enough.”

We ache for Pru and her family, but covet our view through the keyhole at that in-between stage where one starts to become unglued. yet is still together enough to be aware of what is happening (and what is to come). We also come face to face with some heady and introspective queries.

How, for example, do you sum up a person, especially one whose life ends in the black hole of dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease? Who is the real Pru? How should she be remembered? Is it fair to her to remember her in her absolute decline or is it dishonest to remember her otherwise? Do we curate our own memories? Do others curate theirs of us? At the end of the day, does it really matter?

As her own memories dissolve and past human connections along with them, Pru has moments lucid enough to still contemplate Pru-worthy big picture questions. What if, she wonders, her entire life was just a memory trick?

What if, indeed.

“Pru Payne”— Written by Steven Drukman. Directed by Paul Daugneault. Presented by SpeakEasy Stage at Boston Center for the Arts, Calderwood Pavillion, 539 Tremont St., Boston, through Nov. 16.For tickets and more information, go to https://speakeasystage.com/

The Huntington’s “Nassim” Bridges Our Differences through Language, Gimmickry and Charm

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

Jared Bowen in *Nassim* at the Calderwood Pavillion, BCA. Photos by © Mike Ritter

“Nassim” — Written by Nassim Soleimanpour. Directed by Omar Elerian. A new guest performer for every show. Presented by The Huntington through October 27.

By Shelley A. Sackett

“White Rabbit, Red Rabbit,” Iranian Nassim Soleimanpour’s absurdist adventure, which sits on the boundary of comedy and drama and burst into London’s West End in 20212, changed my opinion about audience participation in theater. Not a big fan of the genre, I left the 2016 performance at New York City’s Westside Theatre a convert.

Conceived while 29-year-old Soleimanpour was barred from leaving Iran for refusing military service, the play challenged its audience on issues of trust, obedience and complicity while demolishing the fourth wall and having a different actor read the script for the first time at each performance.

The words were Soleimanpour’s; the implicit messages were the idea of someone trying to speak through someone else and the question of what censorship means.

So when The Huntington announced it was producing the eponymous “Nassim,” I was on board. Originally commissioned and produced by London’s Bush Theatre in 2017, the drama, comedy and social experiment is even more timely today.

Fueled by curiosity, compassion and a longing for global community, Soleimanpour employs his trademark style of having a different actor cold read his script in front of a live audience. Karen MacDonald, the “empress of Boston theater,” had the honors the night I attended, and she rose to the task with her usual humor, flair and skill.

For 75 intermission-less minutes, MacDonald read from a script (minus the italicized stage directions) projected on a jumbo screen, as its pages were moved by disembodied hands. The play’s theme, a meditation on how foreign languages divide us, slowly comes into focus. While Soleimanpour’s plays have been performed in dozens of languages worldwide, they’ve never been performed in Farsi in his native country because of governmental repression. This situation particularly distresses him because his mother, who still lives in Iran, has never heard or seen one of her son’s plays performed in her (and his) mother tongue.

Although “Nassim” at times feels insubstantial and the gimmicky aspect often crosses over into banal cutesiness, its positive message of global community through communication and understanding prevails. Mimicking a language class, Soleimanpour’s script invites the audience (and especially MacDonald) to experience the beauty and magic of his native language, Farsi. We discover through the timeless and borderless device of fairytales.

“Once upon a time” are our first Farsi words, along with “mom.” “You have to learn your mother tongue,” MacDonald reads.

In Act Two, Soleimanpour’s script turns more autobiographical, and we find out that he wrote the play in Farsi with words he wanted to learn in English. The play, which celebrated its 479^th performance and has been staged all over the world, was intended as a means for its author to meet new people and be taught new words all over the world.

“A writer’s heart will always beat in his mother’s tongue,” Soleimanpour says through MacDonald. “But isn’t it amazing how languages work? They bring us together; they tear us apart.”

It would be too much of a spoiler to reveal all the surprises in store, but this charming and timely piece of experimental, experiential theater is a must for anyone curious about more than the shiny, big productions that often dominate conversation, reviews, and box office receipts. Take a chance with this little gem; you won’t be disappointed.

For more information, go to https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/

The escape from Mussolini’s antisemitic Italian fascism told in ‘Pack One Bag’ podcast

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

David and Sergio David Modigliani reviewing documents.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Heirlooms hold the keys that can unlock family histories. For many, these stories remain untold, preserved in artifacts that are passed from generation to generation and display case to display case. They sit silently on a shelf, admired and gathering dust.
Award-winning documentarian David Modigliani’s family was different.

When his grandfather, the Italian-born economist and Nobel Prize winner Franco Modigliani, died in 2003, David’s father Sergio inherited 19 boxes of documents. He kept them in a storage unit, where they remained taped up and unopened until COVID, when David decided to check out what was inside them.

He and documentary producer Willa Kaufman had begun dating just before the country went into lockdown during the pandemic. The boxes were a perfect diversion.

What they found inside was a treasure trove of family archives including letters, personal diaries, and fascist spy documents detailing his family’s harrowing times fighting to survive during the rising tide of antisemitism in 1930s Italy. That was the start of “Pack One Bag,” a 10-part podcast that traces his family’s escape to America.

In the boxes, there were scores of love letters between Franco, then a 19-year-old economics student, and Serena Calabi, the daughter of Jewish publishing baron, Giulio Calabi (known as “The King of the Books”) and the love of his life. Although David had grown up hearing the fairytale stories about his grandparents’ epic romance and their escape from fascist Italy for the United States in 1939, these letters did more than just preserve their love; they bore witness to the perils they confronted as Benito Mussolini and his Italian Racial Laws fueled antisemitism.

Most eye-opening was the 25-page letter that Giorgio, Franco’s brother who stayed behind in Rome, wrote and sent to David’s grandfather just after the war. It detailed, in “harrowing, page-turning prose,” his experience of navigating his family and shepherding them through a gauntlet of horror during the Mussolini regime.

“Reading this letter was chilling and opened up a much deeper understanding of the universe my grandfather could have experienced had he not been so fortunate to fall in love with my grandmother and escape fascist Italy with her family before the outbreak of war,” David told the Journal.

The professional storyteller in him knew he had to get to the bottom of his own family’s story. Toting his grandparents’ love letters, he and Kaufman went to Italy to speak to surviving family members, retrace his family’s steps in Rome and Bologna, and discover the answer to a question that haunted him: Why didn’t they all just flee Italy when they could?

The couple spent months piecing together a story that includes narratives of relatives left behind, recorded in their octogenarian voices. They plumbed state archives and even interviewed former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi, one of Franco’s students. They returned home knowing they had the raw material for a thrilling and timely story. But how to best tell it?

Film has been David’s medium ever since falling in love with the collaborative process of documentary storytelling while a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. He has won numerous awards for his feature films, which have run on Hulu, Netflix, PBS, and HBO.

But this time was different. There were no great visual assets and most of the main characters are no longer living. His coproducer reminded him that podcasts are at heart a visual medium. “A podcast is more akin to reading a novel than film. The audience must construct and build through their own imagination the world you are trying to create for them,” David said.

Actor/producer/writer Stanley Tucci signed on as executive producer and the featured voice of Giulio Calabi. David voices his Nonno Franco and Nonna Serena.

As a kid, he had done impersonations of his grandparents for his sisters and cousins, and when his collaborators heard them, they agreed that it would be an authentic way for him to bring his grandparents to life. David always meant to record them, and regretted that he didn’t prioritize that before they died. “I felt very close to them when I was recreating them for the podcast,” he said.

Episode 1 of the series David and his team created débuted at the 2023 Tribeca Festival as “Shalom, Amore.” It won the Jury Award for Nonfiction Audio, citing its “unexpectedly moving narrative that blends the personal, political, and comical” as it takes listeners “on a journey across generations and continents.”

Later, he changed the name to “Pack One Bag” to reflect the details of his family’s story. When his great-grandparents began illegally ferrying money across the border into Switzerland in the 1930s, they packed one bag so it would look like they were going on vacation. When the Nazis banged on doors in Rome’s Jewish ghetto in 1943, they instructed them to pack one bag.

“This story is about people who happened to be Jewish in the 1930s in Italy,” David said, “but it is a universal story. It applies to people in any environmental or political crisis who have to leave their homes. What do you take with you?”

David, 44, grew up as a “Reform Jewish kid in Brookline” and was especially connected to Judaism culturally and historically. He vividly understood how being Jewish had impacted the physical locations of his family. “My grandparents were in Belmont largely because of their Jewish identity and because they left Italy just in the nick of time,” he said.

He hopes that listeners can find some answers for the present moment from the way his family confronted their situation. “The question at the heart of ‘Pack One Bag’ is ‘when confronted with fascism, do you stay or flee? What if you can’t?’ ” David said.
Noting the upswing of nationalism, totalitarianism, and antisemitism at home and globally, he is reminded how fascism needs an “other” to survive and thrive, a subset of the population that the majority is motivated to antagonize, scapegoat, and persecute.

He cites his great-grandfather Giulio as advice to those being “othered.” “You resist as best you can for as long as you can, and then you flee,” David said.

“For those that have the privilege to exist inside a fascist society without being persecuted, the onus is on us to preserve democracy and to attempt to return society to a more inclusive and tolerant place.”

To listen to the podcast and for more information, visit packonebagshow.com.

Salem teen takes his talents to ‘Leopoldstadt’

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

By Shelley A. Sackett

When her son was little, Liz Polay-Wettengel tried to get him interested in soccer, which his older brother had loved at that age. Instead, all three-year-old Elias wanted to do was memorize lines from the movie “Frozen” and perform them in the living room.

“We knew he needed to try the stage,” she told the Journal.

By the time he was four, Elias Wettengel was on his way to an acting career that would culminate with his casting in the role of young Jacob/Heini in the new production of Tom Stoppard’s award-winning “Leopoldstadt,” which runs at the Huntington Theatre through
Oct. 13.

The sprawling drama follows multiple generations of the fictional Jewish Merz-Jacobowitz family in Vienna in the 20th century. As it moves from 1899 to 1955, the play showcases everyday family dynamics against the ever-changing tides of revolution, war, antisemitism and assimilation.

Stoppard was inspired by the experiences of his own family; all four of his grandparents and three of his mother’s sisters lost their lives in the Holocaust. His stirring masterpiece takes a bold look at what it means to be Jewish for one’s self, in the eyes of others, and in the broader context of history.

“Leopoldstadt” won four Tony Awards in 2023, including Best Play, and two Laurence Olivier Awards, including Best New Play, when it débuted in London’s West End in 2020. The Huntington Theatre production is presented in association with the Shakespeare Theatre Company and features a cast of 15 adults and four children.

Elias, now a 13-year-old student at Collins Middle School in Salem, feels honored to play the roles of Jacob and Heini in such a meaningful play. “As a Jewish kid, the play has extra meaning for me. I sometimes get chills during the scenes,” he told the Journal.

“Leopoldstadt” is an emotionally intense and politically timely production, especially for American Jews. Elias and his mom handle the challenges of his role through open and honest conversations about what being Jewish means today and about how one’s ancestors can shape future generations.

It helps, according to Liz, that her brother-in-law Jason Stark teaches genocide studies. “We answer any questions that arise about death and the Holocaust. We don’t shy away from hard questions and encourage Elias to ask them,” she said.

For Elias, the resilience of family is an important message of the play. “I hope audiences see how generations of Jewish families relate, and the continuous impact they have on each other’s lives throughout time,” he said.

Family is also a major focus of his own religious practice. One of his favorite pieces of Judaism is that his family celebrates holidays like Sukkot by opening their home to everyone who wants to participate, “Being Jewish is always visible in our lives. I love sharing my Jewish culture with my family, friends and community,” he said. He is studying for his bar mitzvah, which his family will host in late 2025.

Elias’s theatrical journey began at the Salem YMCA, and he has since had featured roles in regional productions and in several film and television projects. He acknowledges that balancing the demands of school and performing is sometimes hard, but feels lucky to be a student in a district where his teachers assist him. “They come up with a plan to make sure I’m supported both as an actor and a student,” he said.

He is inspired by the actors he has the opportunity to work with, whether in community theater, films or the current play at the Huntington Theatre, which he hopes will serve as a stepping stone to appearances in additional professional productions. “I’d love to go on a tour or perform on Broadway!” he enthused.

As for advice to four-year-old youngsters who think they want to become actors? “Don’t be sad when you don’t get a role you want. Be happy to be part of theater in general. It isn’t about the role; it’s about the experience,” he said. Θ

For more information and to buy tickets, visit huntingtontheatre.org.

The escape from Mussolini’s antisemitic Italian fascism told in ‘Pack One Bag’ podcast

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

By Shelley A. Sackett

He and documentary producer Willa Kaufman had begun dating just before the country went into lockdown during the pandemic. The boxes were a perfect diversion.

Actor/producer/writer Stanley Tucci signed on as executive producer and the featured voice of Giulio Calabi. David voices his Nonno Franco and Nonna Serena.

He cites his great-grandfather Giulio as advice to those being “othered.” “You resist as best you can for as long as you can, and then you flee,” David said.

To listen to the podcast and for more information, visit packonebagshow.com.

DTF’s Timely ‘True Art’ Is A True Masterpiece

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

Jayne Atkinson, Fiona Robberson in Dorset Theater Festival’s Timely ‘True Art.’
Photos by T Charles Erickson

By Shelley A. Sackett

It was good planning to arrive a little early for the Dorset Theatre Festival’s world première of “True Art.” The bewitching set begged a closer look. Center stage, basking in Renaissance splendor, is Michelangelo’s “Leda and the Swan,’ mounted on a rich burgundy panel. Stage left and right are mirror rows of vertical metal grids, each loaded top to bottom with the A-list of coveted museum possessions, from Pollack to Picasso and Monet to Miro.

These were very good replicas, so good in fact, that even up close, even knowing I was in a converted barn in Dorset, Vermont, and not on Museum Mile in New York City, for a split second, I felt like I was on hallowed artistic ground. Although stage prop replicas, these paintings could evoke the same kinds of feelings as the real McCoys.

Is that a bad thing? Is “fake art” valueless? Can only authentic art evoke valid feelings? Is an emotional reaction to counterfeit art necessarily counterfeit too?

It turns out one of the central questions playwright Jessica Provenz asks in her biting, suspenseful, thought-provoking, and funny newest play is in this same vein: In the provenance of the art world, what makes something — and someone — authentic? Is it the art or the artist? Is it what’s on the canvas or what the critics have written about its artist?

And, more importantly, how much does its history and reputation as an “important” work of art influence whether and how much we do — or feel we should — like it?

Provenz has a light touch and a gift for writing colloquial dialogue, so her play doesn’t bog down under the weight of these and other important issues she raises. What a gift to make your audience simultaneously laugh, gasp, and contemplate, which she does from the moment the play starts.

The action begins in media res at Christie’s auction house. Between the Swader’s set and Joey Moro’s projections, it is as if we are in the audience as auctioneer Buddy Silver (Bob Ari) coaxes higher and higher bids out of imaginary art collectors. On the block is “Leda and the Swam,” the lost Michelangelo painting recently discovered in a farmhouse somewhere in France.

The painting sets a new record for the most ever paid for a work of art.

The scene switches to a bench in front of a painting in a gallery at an iconic and prominent museum, where we meet 22-year-old Lauren Anders (a wonderfully talented Fiona Robberson), a midwestern art history major and the new temp of Jodi Dean (the always fabulous Jayne Atkinson). Dean is the 60-something curator of Renaissance art and has a reputation for eating her interns alive. She averages one per month.

Enter J.J. Winchester (Charlie Reid), a flirty, slouchy young man around Lauren’s age who seems to have the keys that open every door in the museum yet has no articulable reason to be there. We get a lot of information from their casual and clever conversation.

Jodi, J.J. tells Lauren, is known as “Dragon Lady” and has had to claw her way to her position of power. She is the only woman being considered for the museum directorship and J.J.’s dad, the museum’s chairman of the board, is the lone holdout on her achieving this life-long goal.

The two are attracted to each other, and the actors bring an innocent carnality and spot-on delivery to their roles. Lauren tells J.J. she intends to become Jodi’s new intern. J.J. bets Lauren she won’t last the day as a temp.

As she scampers off to face the lion’s den, J.J., clearly smitten, gifts her with the tip that Jodi likes her coffee black, extra sweet.

The Swader’s marvelous set then swivels to reveal Jodi in her lair. Atkinson is perfect, playing Jodi as a gladiator and survivor who, from time to time, reveals emotions that surface through the chinks in her armor. She greets Lauren with daring and disdain. She immediately sets ground rules and lets Lauren know the lay of the land.

From the get-go, Lauren stands her ground while slyly taking the wind out of Jodi’s confrontational sails. She predicts and fulfills her desires (like coffee taken black with extra sugar) while pretending to defer, bow and scrape. Lauren is, after all, a Jodi wannabe. She is as determined and ambitious as her boss, willing to do what it takes to get where she wants to go.

Jodi is on her way to an important press conference. It turns out that Jodi and Buddy, Christie’s auctioneer, art dealer, and her sometime boyfriend, are the ones who found the lost Michelangelo masterpiece, “Leda and the Swan.” Her Renaissance department was the anonymous bidder that purchased it.

It also turns out that Lauren did her thesis on that very painting. She does not share her boss’s enthusiasm for the painting or the story of how it was miraculously discovered. Her challenge is to figure out how to navigate in a dangerous sea of deception and high stakes while maintaining her integrity and her job.

Against this thriller backdrop of smoke and mirrors, truth and lies, Provenz weaves a fabulous page-turner plot that examines two meaty topics. First is a deep look into what it takes for a woman to achieve power in a male world and the lengths she will go to retain it as she reaches the twilight of her career.

The second is the whole notion of authenticity, both in the art world and the world of everyday honor and decency. Do facts matter? Does the truth matter? Does getting it right matter as much as getting ahead?

A woman in power? Facts mattering? Timely indeed.

Director Michelle Joyner has an all-star cast to work with, and she milks their talent and Provenz’s script for all they’re worth. Atkinson, known on stage and television, has the chops to tap into both Jodi’s inner Dragon Lady and her insecurities with humor and humanity. Ari plays Buddy with equal parts smarm, charm, and menace. Reid is chameleon-like, understated and enigmatic one minute, and taking the helm and righting the ship the next.

But it is Robberson as Jodi’s protegée Lauren who really shines in every scene. She has a physicality of gesture and facial expression that dares the audience to look away from her. Hopefully, DTF theatergoers will see more of her next season.

“True Art” is chockful of great lines, high production value, and stellar performances, making it a theater lover’s trifecta of bounty. Yet it also leaves us with plenty to spark after-theater conversations, which are the measure of the most satisfying experience.

Jodi is at her rawest and most honest at the play’s end, when she looks herself in the eye, acknowledges the corners she cut and compromises she has made for the sake of her ambition, and wonders if it was worth it.

“What if my life’s work is wrong? What am I then?” she asks softly. What indeed.

“True Art” – Written by Jessica Provenz. Directed by Michelle Joyner. Scenic Design by Christopher and Justin Swader; Costume Design by Barbara A. Bell; Lighting Design by Patricia M. Nichols; Sound Design by Jane Shaw; Projection Design by Joey Moro. Presented by Dorset Theatre Festival, Dorset, Vermont. Run has ended.

A.R.T.’s Innovative “Romeo and Juliet” Elevates and Grounds Shakespeare’s Masterpiece

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

Emilia Suárez (Juliet) and Rudy Pankow (Romeo) in A.R.T.’s Romeo and Juliet.
Photo Credits: Nile Scott Studios and Maggie Hall

By Shelley A. Sackett

Diane Paulus, Artistic Director at American Repertory Theater, has raised the bar on production values so often, we’ve come to expect the unexpected from her. From 1776 to Pippin to Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Gloria: A Life, Jagged Little Pill, Waitress, SIX, and more, theatergoers in Boston have benefitted from her inspiring collaborations and razor-sharp skills to enjoy Broadway-bound productions right in their own backyard.

Romeo and Juliet is no exception.

Working with a creative team of stellar talent, Paulus has breathed contemporary life into Shakespeare’s 16th-century well-known and oft-quoted masterpiece.

The tragic story is a familiar tale of star-crossed lovers caught in the crosshairs of a family feud so old that its origins have faded from memory. Paulus said she wanted to focus on the couple’s feelings for each other and highlight their love instead of their families’ hate. By using movement, evocative music, lighting, and a spectacularly efficient set, she creates the perfect stage upon which such a transformation can — and does — happen.

As with all Shakespeare (and especially in productions where there are no projected captions to serve as guides), a plot primer can be helpful.

Juliet Capulet (Emilia Suárez of Hulu’s Up Here fame) and Romeo Montague (Rudy Pankow of Netflix’s Outer Banks) meet and fall instantly in love at a masked ball hosted by Juliet’s parents. They profess their devotion when Romeo, unwilling to leave, climbs the wall into the orchard garden of her family’s house and finds her alone at her window. Because their well-to-do families are enemies, the two are married secretly by Friar Lawrence (the fabulous Tony Award winner and multiple nominee, Terrence Mann).

When Tybalt (Alex Ross), a Capulet, seeks out Romeo in revenge for the insult of Romeo’s having dared to shower his attentions on Juliet, an ensuing scuffle ends in the death of Romeo’s dearest friend, Mercutio (Clay Singer). Impelled by a code of honor among men, Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished to Mantua by the Prince of Verona (Jason Bowen), who has been insistent that the family feuding cease.

Juliet’s father (Terence Archie), unaware that Juliet is already secretly married, arranges a marriage with the eminently eligible Count Paris (Adi Dixit). The young bride seeks out Friar Laurence for assistance in her desperate situation. He gives her a potion that will make her appear to be dead and assures her that if she takes it, he will arrange for Romeo to rescue her. She complies.

Romeo, uninformed of the friar’s scheme because a letter of explanation has failed to reach him, returns to Verona on hearing of Juliet’s apparent death. He encounters a grieving Paris at Juliet’s tomb, and reluctantly kills him when Paris attempts to prevent him from entering. There, he finds Juliet in the burial vault. Unaware that she is only sleeping, he gives her a last kiss and kills himself with poison. Juliet awakens, sees the dead Romeo, and kills herself. The families learn what has happened and end their feud.

At Wednesday’s preview performance, magic and pathos were on stage from the opening scene that revealed Amy Rubin’s simple, thick butcher block set bathed in spot-on, evocative lighting (Jen Schriever). Actors push the heavy door open, symbolically revealing the opportunity for closed doors to open. Later, the flexible set will metamorphosize into Juliet’s balcony, a tomb and a party. All of that possibility is communicated in the first few moments.

Background rumbling and emergent music (created by sound designer Daniel Lundberg and the composer of the play’s original music, Alexandre Dai Castaing) set the tone for the opening fight scene, a West Side Story-esque stand-off between two teenage gangs. These are the Capulet and Montague clans, and the fury that boils in their blood is masterfully choreographed by fight consultant Thomas Schall and director/choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. When the scene freezes into a bellicose tableau, the depth underlying this hostility is fixed on each light-bathed face. (Note: West Side Story is a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that shares many themes and tells a similar story but is set in the 1950s in New York City’s Upper West Side).

The impacts of visual imagery, light and sound throughout the two and one half hour (one intermission) production never wane. Rubin’s set frequently pivots to frame two or three scenes, providing simultaneous glimpses of different versions of the same event. Early on, as Romeo and Juliet prepare for the party her parents are throwing, Romeo and his buddies cavort stage left while Juliet preens stage right. The effect is as charming as it is enthralling.

Other special production moments are the use of globe lights (brilliant!), a warpath drumbeat soundtrack (by Dai Castaing), and the opening scene after intermission, when Juliet, wrapped in a white sheet, is lit like a fairy and the soft plunk of a harp highlight her delicate dancer’s gestures.

While enough can’t be written in praise of its production value, the real stars of Romeo and Juliet are the actors and the Bard’s sumptuous language. Cast standouts include Suárez as a stunningly lithesome Juliet, Nicole Villamil as Lady Capulet, Juliet’s mother, and the truly awesome Mann as Friar Laurence.

These three (and several other) actors seem to savor the play’s rich lines, lingering over some and articulating with a deliberateness that allows the audience to savor along with them. Unfortunately, some (most notably Singer as Mercutio) race through their lines, swallowing some of the glorious puns and humor that balance the play’s tragic overtones. A suggestion to A.R.T. is to consider following Shakespeare on the Common’s lead and provide projected captions. Absent that, audiences might want to read the play (it’s a short-ish one!) before or shortly after seeing this production. The added appreciation value is well worth the time spent.

Paulus ends the play on a note of hope despite the carnage that the Verona families’ feud has wrought. As Romeo, Juliet, Thibault, and Mercutio are eulogized and buried, the full cast is on stage. Bright white light bathes the scene as the entire community comes together to bury their dead and plant a garden. Despite the gloomy peace that reigns, the Prince of Verona reminds its citizens, “All are punished. For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and Romeo.”

As Capulets and Montagues sow flowers and trees, we imagine Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the innocence and hope of starting fresh and turning the page. In the current climate of political and environmental angst, who can’t benefit from a message that hints at the possibility of restoration, revitalization, and rebirth?

Romeo and Juliet’ – By William Shakespeare. Directed by Diane Paulus. Movement and Choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui; Original Music Composed by Alexandre Dai Castaing; Scenic Design by Amy Rubin; Costume Design by Emilio Sosa; Lighting Design by Jen Schriever; Sound Design by Daniel Lundberg. Presented by American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St., Cambridge through October 6.

For more information and to buy tickets, go to https://americanrepertorytheater.org/

Iranian Girls Just Wanna Have Fun in Gloucester Stage’s Thought-Provoking “Wish You Were Here”

Posted by Shelley A. Sackett

‘Wish You Were Here’ — Written by Sanaz Toossi. Directed by Melory Mirashafi. Scenic Design by Lindsay G. Fuori; Costume Design by KJ Gilmer; Lighting Design by Amanda Fallon; Composer and Sound Design by Bahar Royaee. At Gloucester Stage in Gloucester through August 25.

By Shelley A. Sackett

“Wish You Were Here,” in its regional premiere at Gloucester Stage, opens on three frozen tableaux set in a lavish apartment with Persian-inspired décor. At an ornate make-up table, two women hover over a third clad in a billowing wedding dress. Another, wearing a red silk short kimono and huge pink curlers, is draped over a couch, a cigarette dangling provocatively from her languid hand. A fifth slouches against the wall. All appear to be in their late teens/early 20s.

Suddenly, the three scenes simultaneously spring to life, all five women speaking to and over each other.

The friends have gathered to prepare for the wedding of Salme (Josephine Moshiri Elwood), the first among them to get married. She is the straightest, most religious and purest of the five. She prays faithfully and frequently on behalf of her friends, hoping their lives will be set on the path she deems is in their best interest.

The girls are chatty, animated, without a care in the world other than outwitting the wittiest and shocking the most prudish among them.

Shideh (Cerra Cardwell) neurotically frets over whether she will get into medical school. Nazarin (Deniz Khateri), a sullen eye roller, plans to become an engineer. She and best friend Rana (Aryana Asefirad), the kimono girl, vow never to marry and have children. Zari (Isan Salem), the youngest of the group, longs for sex. Vagina and large penis jokes are their favorites.

Although the setting is 1978 in Karaj, Iran, a city about 26 miles from Tehran, these five rambunctious friends could be straight out of the pajama party scene in “Grease.” They are silly, lewd and disarmingly intimate. They bicker and clown. They mock and soothe. They constantly touch each other and tease about sex and their bodies.

They paint each other’s nails, remove each other’s unwanted hair and perform the pre-wedding night olfactory “pussy audit.” Their favorite game is the telepathic “What am I thinking?” Through the boisterous banter and loving friction, their deep commitment to this quintet is unmistakable.

The atmosphere inside this posh apartment crackles with pop culture and the promise of youthful dreams of adventure, travel and sex. Although “there’s static in the air,” the girls are unconcerned about anything outside their snow globe existence. They hear the protests outside and are aware that the Shah has left, but blithely ignore the shape-shifting world around them.

Over the next 100 minutes, we will drop in on this living room and this group another 10 times, following them from 1978 until 1991. Mirroring the upheaval experienced by their country (from the Shah’s exile to the Islamic crackdown and revolution led by Khomeini to the American hostage crisis to the Iran-Iraq War), these five will face marriage, loss, the impact of misogynist religious zealotry and the torment of dreams snuffed out.

The first intrusion of the outside world into their cocoon comes the next year.

Before the Shah’s exile, Jews lived safely beside their Muslim fellow Iranians, flourishing and blending in. Muslims and Jews lived side by side, and religious freedom was a nonissue. Affluence and status mattered much more. With the Islamic Revolution, all that changed.

When we encounter the group for the next wedding (1979), there is turmoil in the streets. The Shah is out, and Khomeini is in. This turbulence directly affects our friends when Rana, the “cool Jewish girl and Nazanin’s best friend,” and her entire family go missing. Dishes were left in the sink, and there was no sign of a struggle. No one has seen or heard from them since.

Each girl deals with this loss in telling and different ways.

“She’s fine,” Nazanin says, although, as another points out, “A whole family of Jews missing is usually not a good sign.” Only Salme tries to find her through prayer and the internet. Later, in Act II, one wonders, “Where do we all go when there is no one trying to locate us?” a recurrent rhetorical and thematic thread.

By the third wedding, there may be Bee Gees disco in the background, but the internal atmosphere of the apartment has been infiltrated. The radio crackles with static, but when it is clear, Nazanin is nearby, hoping to hear a word about what is going on outside their doors.

As religious piety and intolerance increasingly rule the land, the group dwindles further. Salme embraces religion and prayer but meets an untimely death when she drowns while swimming in her burka. Shideh takes the opposite path, fleeing to the United States to study medicine. Nazarin and Zari, who never really cared for each other, are the sole sorority sisters.

“Do you love me because I’m the only one left?” Zari asks when they rekindle their friendship. They bond out of desperation and loneliness, vowing to remain in Iran and feed the flames of their newfound friendship. Yet Zari applies for a green card “just to be safe” and Nazarin is caught up in the torment of disappointment and confusion.

She disdains prayer, but believes in its power. She wonders every day how her life might have turned out had she been able to become an engineer had the winds of politics been blowing in her favor. She desperately misses Rana, yet never tried to find her. She swore she would settle for no less than true love, yet admits on her wedding day that she doesn’t love the man she is about to marry.

Iran, her homeland, is a dead end for everything that matters to her, yet she steadfastly refuses Zari’s offer to get her a green card. “Why,” she wonders aloud, “don’t I want to leave?”

When Rana finally gets in touch, 10 years after leaving, Nazanin and she pick up exactly where they left off. “Are you still a Muslim?” Rana asks. “Are you still a Jew?” Nazanin fires back, not missing a beat.

After five years in Israel, Rana now lives in California and works in a Pizza Hut. Suburban America may be spiritually lifeless, but she will never return to Iran. Instead of turmoil, revolution, persecution and flight, her children will know only one home, one that can’t inflict the kind of heartbreak and devastation she suffered.

Toossi revisits many of the same themes of emigration, national identity, home and displacement she so brilliantly tackled in her Pulitzer Prize winner, “English.” “Who do you think of when you think of where you’re from?” she asks through her characters. Who defines you? Where do you find your home? Is it a place? The people? Shared experiences? Where you grew up or where you live now?

Unfortunately, “Wish You Were Here” misses the high mark set by “English.” Toossi doesn’t flesh out these girls’ backgrounds and individualities; they lack nuance and depth. They live in an impenetrable bubble, teetering on a tipping point, and we have a hard time caring.

Director Mirashrafi does the best she can with a script that compresses 13 years into 100 minutes and 10 scenes that are confusing because they give too little context about the raging Iranian politics. There is a Dramaturgy & Timeline in the Playbill (which is most helpful if read BEFORE the play starts), but that doesn’t take the place of timeline references within the script, especially where the play is meant to cover so much ground in such a short time.

Sometimes it was impossible to tell that a new scene in a new year had started until it was almost over. It was also often impossible to tell who was who, especially at the very beginning when each girl seemed to be shouting, the pace was a little too quick and the girls’ names were indecipherable.

Nonetheless, it’s always a pleasure to attend a performance that may take several days of percolating before its impact bubbles up. In addition to the timely issues she raises, American-Iranian Toossi provides a compassionate multi-layered glimpse of Iranian society. Several scenes, although they also present speed bumps in the drama’s flow, are poignant reminders of the beauty and mystery at the heart of Islam.

There are joyful elements of traditional music, dress, and custom. The full silence during Salme’s long prayer scene lets the audience (and the less observant and devoted girls) through the keyhole of the sweet, nourishing elements of a religion that has been hijacked and weaponized by militant male power grabbers determined to dominate women and infidels.

It’s too bad Toossi didn’t spend more time exploring this element, as well as giving her characters a third dimension. Who knows? That might have elevated this play to the level we know she has the chops to write. For more information, go to https://gloucesterstage.com/

InSights

A Blog by Shelley A. Sackett

100 Years Later, Martha Graham Remains the Gold Standard of Contemporary Dance

ASP’s ‘Emma’ Is Deliciously Incisive, Ingenious and Impudent

SpeakEasy’s “Pru Payne” Is A Must See for Fans of Fabulous Theater

The Huntington’s “Nassim” Bridges Our Differences through Language, Gimmickry and Charm

The escape from Mussolini’s antisemitic Italian fascism told in ‘Pack One Bag’ podcast

Salem teen takes his talents to ‘Leopoldstadt’

The escape from Mussolini’s antisemitic Italian fascism told in ‘Pack One Bag’ podcast

DTF’s Timely ‘True Art’ Is A True Masterpiece

A.R.T.’s Innovative “Romeo and Juliet” Elevates and Grounds Shakespeare’s Masterpiece

Iranian Girls Just Wanna Have Fun in Gloucester Stage’s Thought-Provoking “Wish You Were Here”